A General Theory of Love
by Thomas;Amini, Fari;Lannon, Richard Lewis
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Book Reviews of A General Theory of Love
Book Review: A Generational Theory of Love.
Summary: 4 Stars
As a Gen X'er, I grew up immersed in a lexicon of fairly new terms- latchkey kids, joint custody, visitation rights, running memes of televised PSAs (words hit as hard as a fist; don't take it out on your child.) In an age peopled with pop-culture heroes like the anti-authoritarian, if clownish, Ferris Bueller (I'm not dissing Ferris- the film remains among my faves) and the debut of the very un-Madonnaesque Madonna, it was my generation, I believe, that weathered the transition from the nuclear family to the somewhat detonated familial landscape that predominates Western society, today. Having said that, now that the post-punk kids of Generation X are themselves parents, I actually see that a new trend has emerged. Yes, we're getting married and having children later, but I also see, almost without exception in the peers with whom I share any kind of intimacy, a devotion to their progeny.
Reading this book has had a profoundly positive effect on my outlook on this observed social phenomenon. The drawbacks, in my estimation, are minor, and they are (it is?) as follows. The book was co-authored by three different writers. This was slightly problematic for me as invariably one 'voice' will arise as the more attractive among the others. The preface left me nearly breathless. Other reviewers have mentioned the book's lyricism and I couldn't agree more. The book is, by all three authors, exquisitely-crafted. Though I did find that some chapters just drew me in more deeply than others.
In any event, one couldn't reasonably expect a more beautiful execution on the subject matter- essentially, a clinical survey of mammalian affection and connection. Though the entire book is not about the relationship between parent and child, a reader cannot help but come away from the experience without any doubt that the earliest relationships bear the most powerful stamps not only on our psyches, but our very neurophysiological (in particular, limbic) development. One thing I found particularly inspiring was that though negative patterns might be laid down 'limbically,' a later limbic relationship- one in which there is an acknowledged, fostered mutual dependence- can alter a person's patterns of relating for the better. In fact, this is the only way a person can be 'reprogrammed' so to speak. What love damages, love can repair.
I believe this is an important book for as many people whom have an interest in the topic to read. Rather than being a fully eye-opening experience, really what it boils down to is empirical confirmation of what you might have suspected all along. We are who we are because of who we love and are loved by.
Recommended read.
Book Review: Love as Influenced and Sustained by the Brain
Summary: 4 Stars
These three authors use creative literary style and scientific research to argue for the great importance and influence of the brain upon the nature and expression of love. The book is written for a general but scholarly audience. Our brains link us with those people to whom we love and as a consequence who we are, and who we become depends in great part on whom we love. It is the body's physiology that ensures our relationships and identities.
The authors lament that from the beginning of the 20th century to its end, the most influential accounts of love rarely, if ever, mentioned biology. Although the authors point to important links between physiology and love, they do not claim to have solved all of the mysteries of love. This book's thesis or agenda is described well when the authors asked this question: "What can the structure and design of the brain tell us about the nature of love?" (18)
One of the main theses of the book is that understanding love begins with understanding feelings rather than the reason. "Emotion is the messenger of love; it is the vehicle that carries every signal from one brimming heart to another" (37).
The authors document well the profound effects that various regions of the mind have upon human behavior. For instance, the authors note that patients who have lost the hippocampi bear witness to the memory aspect of this region of the brain, because no explicit memories can be created without a hippocampus.
The authors note the profound importance of relationships. "The astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision: the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love, as our attractors activate certain limbic pathways, and the brain's inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them" (144). However, the neurostructures responsible for emotional lives are not infinitely adaptable in relationship.
The book concludes with these words: "The adventure of seeking a theory of love is far from over. While science can afford a closer glimpse of this tower or that soaring wall, the heart's castle still hangs high in the heavens, shrouded in scudding clouds and obscured by mist. Will science ever announce the complete revelation of all love's secrets? Will empiricism ever trace an unbroken path from the highest stone to the heart's castle down to the bedrock of certitude? Of course not! We demand too much if we expect single-handed empiricism to define and lay bare the human soul" (230).
Thomas Jay Oord
Book Review: A General Theory of...just what I needed
Summary: 4 Stars
This book first caught my eye because of the picture on the cover. As cliché as it might sound, I judged the book by the front cover because of two, barn red chairs, leaning together in an empty room. After reading the book through, the cover gave an accurate description of the detail within. The book sought to bridge the gap between emotion and biology by presenting the `basic theory' of attraction through the means of psychobiology and human attraction. The book's authors sought to compare things such as human emotion and behavior to biological and environmental influence by stating that when we are young, our "nervous systems are not self contained: from earliest childhood our brains actually link to those of the people close to us that makes up the life force of the body." The book prompts readers to continue in intuitive ways of the heart and not to let media and social norms distract from our innate ability to feel emotion within the very anatomy of our nervous system's key contributors; such as the heart and brain. The book suggests that certain parts of our body's major communication system, the limbic system, have distinct abilities aside from keeping us functioning physically. "Human beings are immersed in a sea of social interchange, surrounded by a subtle communications network that most do not notice. The limbic brain is our internal cryptographic device, allowing us to decipher a flood of complex messages in an instant. But when decoding breaks down, the resulting deficits can show us what emotionality enables the rest of us to do."
This book is recommended to those who are studying fields relating to the human body and psychology or to readers seeking to advance in well rounded theories of love within the disciplines of biology, economics or physics. This book is not effective as a self-help tool and it does not help in offering relationship guidance. Rather, it is a building block for those hoping to enter into meaningful relationships with family or romantic interests after discovering their own capacities to love. Most of the vocabulary in the book is explained, but there are times in which you might need a background in a few of the subjects introduced.
Book Review: Good introduction to a general theory of attachment
Summary: 4 Stars
I found this book a mostly quite well written review of evidence that we are fundamentally social beings, that early traumatic social experiences are not simply generative of a "software" problem for the brain but alter the 'hardware' in fundamental and maladaptive ways, and that we need to re-examine both some very old wisdom on these issues, and evidence from newer neuroscience about our basic social nature. The general argument advanced in the volume is certainly an old one, but marshals much depth of evidence, that in the end all we have are our connections to loved and valued people, places, and endeavors, that very little else matters, and that events in our lives in general matter to the extent that they tap into this primary source of value.
What I find most puzzling and frankly somewhat disturbing is the level of antipathy to these basic and very old ideas among the reviews of this book on this web site. People seem very disturbed by the notion that both very painful and very comforting childhood experience stays with us for the rest of our lives, that we are not and cannot be particularly happy if we are profoundly isolated, and that cognitive development takes place within a social matrix. Although questions were raised in some of the reviews about evidentiary issues, the tone of many of the negative reviews suggests to me that some of the reviewers did not believe that early attachment experience colors our development in profound and oftentimes invisible ways, simply because it is so hard to get outside our own heads when it comes to primary emotions. Anyone with a modicum of emotional commonsense, I hope anyway, would find such assertions consistent with some very basic human limitations, and the book in general certainly presents evidence for a bedrock of basic human needs that people within mental health fields, neuroscience, as well as other disciplines would do well to review and absorb.
Some reviewers appear to disagree with these basic assertions. I do not. It is troubling that such an effort to outline those needs, however imperfectly sketched, might create such an antipathy for any reader.
Book Review: A Wonderfully Un-American Idea
Summary: 3 Stars
... Most Americans believe that people should grow up to be autonomous individuals through the sustained exercise of personal will and effort. "A General Theory of Love" is an un-American book. Lewis, Amini, and Lannon, all psychiatrists, argue that we develop confidence, happiness, and feelings of independent competence only through ongoing dependencies within intimate human relationships. True maturity is achieved not by scorning dependency but by continually satisfying our need for it throughout our lives.
Of course, op-ed writers tell us that children need time with attentive relatives instead of with TVs and computers, and psychologists commenting on recent school shootings theorize that teenagers with violent tendencies lack strong, healthy bonds with their families. "A General Theory of Love" takes such ideas further and grounds them in brain research made possible by new technologies.
Recent research into the physiology of the limbic brain is especially revealing, says the book. Scientists once believed that this part of the brain only coordinated sensations from the external world and internal organs. But recent brain-wave experiments show that experience lays down patterns in the limbic brain which regulate our emotions, and that these patterns change and grow throughout our lives.
Thus our nervous systems are not autonomous or self-contained, but continually rewired by intimacy with others. No wonder two lovers feel like one person: their closeness forms new psychic patterns in both. No wonder psychotherapy takes time: we heal by connecting with healthy therapists long enough for our minds to become more like theirs.
This persuasive, moving book is wise about the heart as well as the nervous system. But the writing can be exasperatingly verbose. Sometimes Lewis whips a sentence to a froth as if hoping the jargon will vanish among the bubbles; sometimes he just seems anxious to impress. If he listened to his prose as attentively as he listens to his clients, he'd create stronger, healthier bonds with his readers, but despite the book's overwrought style its fascinating content makes it well worth reading.